Hillary's Book: A "Review" Jude Wanniski June 10, 2003

Memo To: Website Fans, Browsers, Clients
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: A Book Review

I haven’t gotten around to buying Hillary’s book, Living History, just published yesterday. Maybe I’ll get one for Father’s Day, so I will wait and see. I really would like to at least read selected parts, to get her rationales for some of the things that occurred during her eight years as First Lady. What I chose today as commentary is the column by Gary Aldrich, who was the FBI’s man in the White House in the first five of those years. He reminds us of the messiness Hillary left in her wake during that period. I’m probably a little more forgiving than Mr. Aldrich seems to be, but then he was up close and I was not. I do hope Senator Clinton has learned from that experience as I expect she will be running for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination one of these days. Aldrich mentions Sid Blumenthal’s book, which I will also take a stab at if one happens to come my way. Otherwise, I might wait for the movie, if there is one. Christopher Hitchens tells me that I am mentioned in Sid’s book as some kind of a nut. Well, at least he got that right.

True Lies
By Gary Aldrich

Sid Blumenthal's book about the Clinton White House was released a few weeks ago. At 822 pages, one wonders if Sid thinks books should be sold by the pound. But if books were sold by the lie, Hillary Clinton's new book, some 240 pages shorter, would give Sid's book a run for the money.

Both books adhere to the Big Lie theory: if a lie is big enough, and if you tell it often enough, you can get a majority of people to believe just about anything.

Sid’s book gives an endless O.J. Simpson dream-team treatment for each of the Clinton scandals as he attempts to airbrush history. Rewriting history is essential, because if Sid and Hillary can't do it, their twisted political ideology doesn't have a prayer.

The Hard-Left has nothing to offer except lies. They have correctly observed that there are many Liberals in this country who are willing to believe anything their leftist leadership tells them, even when it's clear they're being fed big, bold whoppers.

Thus, when otherwise credible eyewitnesses claim that Bill Clinton is a reckless womanizer, a hysterical chorus rises up and demands a burden of proof rarely ever required in a civil court they want to see the DNA. The Hard-Left pacifies their faithful by impugning the credibility of truthful witnesses.

Without DNA proof, as far as the Hard-Left is concerned, it never happened.

Sid and Hillary continually allege that every scandal during the Clintons eight long years in office was the product of a well-financed, mean-spirited Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, determined to bring down well-meaning progressives like Bill and Hillary Clinton.

In a recent television interview, Hillary Clinton asserted that such efforts to deny her husband's legitimacy existed from the very beginning of his and her presidency. Since I am often cited as one of the members of this Right Wing Network or Conspiracy, let me recall just a few of the events which defined the Clinton presidency and caused some like me to become alarmed:

The presidents very first agenda was to undo just about anything the previous president had set into place by executive order. Breaking procedures, policies, rules, and many laws was no big deal for Clinton and his privileged administration who believed they were above the law.

Clinton's next major agenda item was to make the military safe for gays and lesbians. This Hard-Left agenda item got the attention of the nation in general and Christian evangelicals in particular not to mention more than a few serious Catholics and immediately plunged the new administration into unnecessary chaos.

Also during the Clintons first year in office, Hillary Clinton was placed in charge of one of this country's biggest efforts to socialize a significant aspect of every citizen's life. Hillary and her liberal friends wanted to make healthcare a vast system of government bureaucracies so that everyone would have universal healthcare just like they enjoy in Cuba.

Hillary's healthcare program was sweeping and would have turned any American who wanted to seek their own doctor into a crook. Maybe that's why Hillary's plan was rejected or maybe people caught a strong whiff of Hard-Left Socialism in the air and were smarter than Hillary expected. The rejection of Hillary-care became one of the Clintons greatest failures and colored most of the rest of this dysfunctional administration's years as people wondered what they would botch next.

Clinton disasters occurred on both large and small scales. For instance, Clinton's petulant and clumsy administration fired dozens of career White House correspondence analysts, some who had worked there for more than 25 years. These experienced employees were scrapped to reward donors and campaign workers with patronage jobs. The resulting mountain of unopened, unanswered mail caught the attention of the Washington press corps who wondered what might happen to all that mail. No problem: the mail was taken away to warehouses to keep it out-of-sight and the rest was shredded in the basement of the Old Executive Office Building.

Hillary also ordered the sacking of the White House Travel Office. To make it look like there were good reasons for firing these seven dedicated federal workers Hillary's agents accused them of wrong doing and sicced the FBI and IRS on these innocent functionaries. Just to make sure everyone got the message, press secretary Dee Dee Meyers went to the Washington press corps to announce their impending investigation by the feds.

Instead of avoiding the bad press they invited with the firing of the dedicated and experienced ladies in the Correspondence Office, this clumsy and injurious act brought the Clintons congressional scrutiny as senators and congressmen were alerted to a very real abuse of presidential power.

Another example occurred when Clinton's ATF botched a raid on the Branch Davidian's compound outside a little Texas town named Waco. After being accused of ineptitude by the Washington press corps, Attorney General Janet Reno ordered the FBI to assault the compound, killing more than 80 people 20 of whom were innocent babies.

As if things weren't bad enough, Clinton took an unprecedented step in firing the FBI Director. William Sessions responded by accusing Clinton of politicizing the FBI.

The day after Sessions was fired, Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Mystery surrounded Fosters death, and to make matters worse, the Clintons and their friends acted as if they were hiding something. This caused the curious to continue looking, and in the end, no one could say for sure that Foster killed himself or that he died in Fort Marcy Park.

There is a plethora of material for any Vast Right Wing Conspiracy to use against Bill and Hillary Clinton. But evidence of their incompetence and their out-of-touch Hard-Left political schemes speak for themselves. Regardless of whether or not a group of concerned American citizens stood watch for the Clintons schemes and maneuvers then or now, there was always a hungry Washington press who could not resist investigating and reporting the Monica Lewinsky affair.

Hillary should thank her lucky stars that Monica came along when she did, because a very real effort to impeach Bill Clinton for good reasons was well underway in the U.S. House of Representatives. This effort was led by Congressman Bob Barr, a former United States Attorney, who knew how to weigh good, strong evidence.

When the ugliness of the Lewinsky affair surfaced in January of 1998, any chance to impeach Bill Clinton for good reasons was washed away by a Washington press corps obsessed with sex. That particular circus side-show was not created by a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Much of what Hillary and Sid complain about today was of their own creation as they tried to explain Bill Clinton's reckless womanizing.

Hillary and Sid sought to align themselves with the political life of Bill Clinton, a seriously flawed man. When it comes to Bill Clinton, what you see is what you get. So they should not complain they got what they expected and what they deserved.

Plus, Hillary and Sid got huge book advances, and nobody in the so-called well-financed Vast Right Wing can claim that juicy accomplishment.

Gary Aldrich is president and founder of The Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, a TownHall.com member group.